On The Road Again...

I've been on the road a lot for work the last couple weeks.

Last week I was in Duluth for a maintenance conference. I took advantage of a couple breaks in the schedule and made a couple trips over to Great Lakes Fly Shop, I picked up some supplies and shot the bull with John.




I learned quite a bit about the Lake Superior steelhead fishery and the drastic differences versus the Lake Michigan fishery I am much more familiar with. I snagged some hooks, beads and Thin Skin for some copper johns, which is a totally new to me pattern.

I tied up some heavily weighted number 10s using left over copper wire from a remodel project. I intend to use these for dragging lighter nymphs down deeper in the water column when fishing trout lakes.





This week I was down near Chicago. I hate cities and wasn't really looking forward to the trip. It made my day when I got to the row of rental cars at Midway and the guy said 'pick one'.  This little
red girl was just hangin by her lonesome.





Haven't found a mud hole yet but not for lack of trying. Gas mileage sucks compared to my Forester. Not sure I'd ever own one but I am enjoying this one. I was driving back from an event last night in the middle of those torrential rains. At one point I had water flying up over the hood when driving down a residential street at ~10 mph. That puddle was deep! But she kept on chuggin along.


I made a trip to bass pro this afternoon and snagged some bead heads for #6 nymphs I will tie with steelhead in mind. Spotted this on the way back to the hotel. Not sure what happened but somebody is having a rough day.





I head home tomorrow. Been a long stint if travel and it will be good to get home.

Escape to the North Shore

I am given 2 weeks of vacation a year, plus however many comp hours I earn during shut downs and emergency maintenance. As of mid September I had use exactly zero of the 6 weeks of vacation I had accumulated.

None of the trout fishing trips I had planned came through.

I needed to get away. So I took the week of the 15th of September off and headed for the North Shore. I was planning to chase brookies but brought the heavy gear incase of lake run fish.

As usually I packed way too much crap....

 

Stopped at a scenic over look on the way. The Iron Range is not a bad place to live, but it sure isn't the Keweenaw.



I decided to take a different road, things got a little rowdy...

Got back on the maintained forest roads. I usually put the kick stand down when I pull the map out. Guess I forgot this time.

I finally made it to a National Forest rustic camp ground that happened to be right on a North Shore river. I tied into a couple small brookies on my TFO 2wt.

Had dinner and a small fire, smoked a stogie and drank some tea then called it a night.

The next day I headed up the shore a ways and tried a couple streams recommended by a friend.

Found a river mouth with the pinks schooling. Casting a size 4 rabbit strip muddler on a 2wt was like flinging a brick but it got the job done. The rod was the perfect size for these small salmon. Fishing was slow but I found that if I bounced the streamer off their noses enough times they'd get pissed and hit it....or smack it with their tail and get foul hooked. Either way I turned them all loose.

The ride home was wet and miserable but it was all worth it to get away for a bit.